Fantasy novels without Mary Sues.

Oh yeah so some more. Ash, by Mary Gentle. Divides opinion a wee bit, but I love it, I’ll read it every couple of years for the rest of my life. And the first 5 Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny.

And the weirdly overlooked Black Company series by Glen Cook, this feels pretty dated now to be fair but it was a huge inspiration to the whole “fantasy in which everyone is a bastard or a dick” genre, lots of fighting to the death for the least awful option.

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman? (ie Golden Compass/Northern Lights). Will’s a bit <nice> but Lyra’s proper chaotic good, half her character is her complete dishonesty, half her arc is driven by ignorance and revenge, she’s a little shit but on the right side. Also it’s got ****in armoured bears and mad motorbike-sloths.

Thanks to whoever recommended empire of the vampire, I’ve just finished the second book. I had some misgivings because vampire stuff tends to be quite lame but I thoroughly enjoyed it, looking forward to the next book.

For any Mark Lawrence fans his latest book is out tomorrow ‘The book that broke the world’. The first of the series wasn’t IMO the best of his stuff but it’s still very good. Maybe I’m stupid the big twist definitely caught me by surprise.

I re-read The War of Powers this week off the back of this thread – great fun, definitely worth tracking down copies of the old paperbacks.

I’ve only just got the book, through a recommendation online, but it looks fascinating; ‘Children of Time’, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Apparently it involves genetically engineered spiders, jumping spiders to be exact, which I’m fascinated by. The actual arachnids, while tiny, are very intelligent, and are capable of making decisions and planning strategies while tracking prey, which is remarkable considering their brains only have something like 10,000 neurons, yet they appear to be much smarter than some humans with neurons numbering in the billions, if I’m not mistaken.
My next book once I’ve finished the Moreno-Garcia book.

@countzero I’m on the third in the series, a really well structured alternative evolution story

Definitely one I would recommend

His Dark Materials books are fantastic, if slightly for kids. The follow ups when Lyra’s older are proper adult. And excellent.

Earthsea again excellent. There’s also loads of good YA fantasy about these days. Septimus Heap is great, and the Eragon books bridge the gap between YA and proper adult fantasy beautifully.

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe has a deeply flawed but likeable main character and remains one of my favourite fantasy works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_New_Sun

I am surprised that it is not better known as it is a stunning piece of work.

Another +1 for Children of Time. It’s a big book, with some quite ‘serious’ scifi, but definitely got that edge/ fun in it that Iain M Banks always had, that makes you want to keep going and find out what happens next. As opposed to Alastair Reynolds, which is mainly on the heavy side (but still v good obviously)